The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation broadened its reach by attending the world’s biggest video games event this summer – but faces challenges funding its work helping underrepresented developers
Listen, I think its cool that people are following their dreams. But I can’t imagine looking at the modern world and thinking “The thing we’re really lacking right now is more new video games”.
What I would love to see is the existing pool of video game developers enjoying more labor protections, shorter working hours, paid sick leave, and guaranteed housing/health care benefits. Because, as someone who has seen the industry chew up and spit out really talented developers, that strikes me as far more important than just learning to code or getting networked into the crunch pipeline at EA or Microsoft.
Walles says: “My favourite example of someone in our cohort who has work experience but is trying to break into the games industry is this young man from Nigeria. He’s a home builder, he’s project managing every day, building houses – and he codes. He wants to take that project management experience and become a producer in video games.”
This is such a bleak read, knowing how many people - both inside the gaming industry and out - who are struggling to find affordable housing.
I think it’s perhaps more necessary than you might think.
We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms. They intelligently gather players, and they successfully evade boycotting measures, but they don’t make people happy. And, the studios that went into them used to make such games but have been bought out and squeezed out by private equity.
If somebody really wants to play an online shooter, they’ll still play COD even if they hate it, IF it’s the only good option. The more new options appear, the less valuable those entrenched games get and the more likely they collapse entirely.
We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified. Even Gabe Newell won’t live forever.
We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms.
Where do you think future game developers are getting funneled? This is a tail as old as the industry. Big firms sponsor these entry level programs in order to glut the market with cheap labor.
We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified.
I do not think we need more game developers (particularly in an industry that’s contracting labor demand in the pivot to AI) more than we need housing developers (particularly in a real estate market that is struggling to meet new production targets).
Friendly reminder that not everything needs to be funneled through the lens of the geopolitical, capitalist, and technological quagmire of our times. People need things to live for, to dream for, to imagine. Even people who are fighting everyday for a better world need some time doing recreation. If it is the requirement of utopia to give up on frivolous yet joyful endeavors then what do you strive for?
